And The Clock Never Stops For A Woeful Tale
by Three Cheers For Treason
Summary: These boys deserve more than what life dished out for them - but she seemed to have earned every bad memory. The Tourniquet Alchemist will help them find what they're looking for - and hopefully, she thought grimly, I'll bury the past while I'm at it.
1. Chapter 1

OI!~ Alice here.

Wow, my very first fanfiction! It's like, my first child or something~ * Becomes teary eyed * I always knew it would be a Fullmetal alchemist… ANYWAYS! Envy, state the disclaimer while I gracefully bake brownies while balancing on my head!

Envy:…

Alice: Just do it or I'll ship you with Hoho. And we _all_ know how disturbing _that _pairing is.

Envy: * sigh * Alice doesn't own Fullmetal Pipsqueak.

Ed: WHY YOU-

Envy: I mean Alchemist. But she does own Marin…and that's about it.

Alice: AND SO IT BEGINS!

Everyone else: * Facepalm *

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_I don't want to hand this in. I don't want to go inside. I don't want to see his stupid smirk. I don't want to have to explain to him what I saw – who I never intended to see… But worst of all…I don't want to have to knock on the door. _

Maybe standing there for 10 minutes was a bad idea. Staring at the polished wood frame, the scene behind it clear as daylight in her mind… He would be sitting at his desk, eyes narrowed, pompous grin.

_I don't want to go in, I don't want to go in, I don't want to go in. _

Knuckles raised, hovering inches away from the door, the young alchemist groaned internally.

_I'll just give it tomorrow_, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. _I'll just give it tomorrow and maybe he won't even be in his office so I won't have to deal with-_

The door opened with a whoosh, startling me.

"Oh," said the colonel, a little surprised. "Marin. I wasn't expecting…weren't you…?"

"Yes," I huffed, gathering the courage internally, and shielding the anti social like fear on my face with a bit of a serious tone. "I know was supposed to get back tomorrow from Persterone, but, some things came up…that's what I came here to talk to you about…and hand in my…report…colonel, were you…sleeping?" He looked at me through bleary eyes, and his hair was a little ruffled. Standing up straighter, he looked down at me.

"No." My face deadpanned. Oh. So _that's_ how it's gonna be.

He looked at his watch, and grumbled, "Alright, let's just get this over with. I have a council meeting at-"

"Yea, yea, I'll make it quick so you can go on your date with your skank." _Ha. That's more like it,_ I thought, following him into the office and sitting on the couch.

Roy glared daggers at me. I guess he figured whatever I had been rattled by was gone.

"That wasn't very funny."

"Didn't expect it to be – I'm not a funny person."

"You're not very good at telling jokes."

"Like I said. I'm not a funny person."

"Well maybe I should just have your name changed to 'the thickheaded alchemist.' I'm sure a lot of people would have some funny stuff to say about _that_," he said, gritting his teeth.

"And I should tell your little bodyguard about your date tonight that conflicts with your paperwork-I'm sure she'll have some funny stuff to say about that. With her gun."

"Dammit Marin! For once in your life, respect your superiors!" He snapped.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that when my superior is being a dumbass?!"

He glared at me, and we stared each other down. Something flickered in his eyes.

_No. Don't look at me like that. Don't do this again._

He looked away. "Whatever. Just give me the report," he said in a steely voice, crossing his arms and putting his feet up on his desk.

You can't even look me in the eye anymore_. You can't even begin to see what you've done to me, _I had said to him. That day.

I disgust myself.

"No, wait," I found myself saying. His eyes darted over to me.

"I…I'm sorry," I sighed. "You're right." There was a long silence. He turned over and studied me critically. Then his eyebrows raised and he stood up.

"That wasn't just a burglary case in Persterone, was it?" He asked.

I tilted my head back on the couch, closed my eyes, and said, "No. No, it wasn't."

I looked up. "How is Hawkeye, anyways?"

A big red and black boot slammed the door open, causing them both to look over with a bit of a startled expression.

He stood in the doorway, red jacket and all. I knew this one. Edgar or Edmund or…Edward_._ He had his hands on his hips and a wicked grin on his face. "Hello Colonel Jerkwad!" He said proudly. A huge metallic figure peeked into the room in a timid fashion.

"Alphonse. Fullmetal," the Colonel acknowledged. "You're looking especially cheerful today."

"The Brigadier General wants you in the conference room. Something about being late for a council meeting?" I raised my eyebrows. Huh. Imagine that. There really was a meeting.

Mustang looked at his watch again, and then up at the one on the wall. "Don't I have 10 minutes?" He murmured to himself.

"The throbbing vein on the Brigadier General's forehead says otherwise," the boy in the doorway said happily. Uttering a particularly nasty curse, Roy glowered over at me, and shot me a look that said 'if you even think about leaving the room I will barbeque your organs from the inside out.' I raised my hands and smirked in defeat, and he stormed out of the room without giving the blonde a second glance. Edward, seemingly having momentarily forgotten my existence, pumped his fist in the air. The metal one wore a look of concern. "That was almost too easy," the shorter one laughed, jumping over the desk and clapping his hands together on to the file cabinet. A blue light filled the room for a split second, and the cabinet opened. He chuckled, rubbing his hands together, and said "Now Al, if we're to find it we should divide and co-"

"Oi," I said. They both looked over at me. "You're the one they call Fullmetal," I said, eyeing him. He didn't say anything. I took on a serious air and mentioned in a low voice, "How do you know that I won't right you up for breaking, entering, and lying to a superior officer?" They were both quiet. I broke into a grin. "Hah! You thought that I was serious," I laughed. The larger figure sighed in relief, and Edward looked me over skeptically. He gave me a judging look and said, "How do you know that I won't write you up for assist?" he asked. I smiled, jumping over the desk.

"Any opportunity to screw over Mustang is a nice job for me," I said.

"Eh? What's your grievance with the Colonel?"

"Um, Ed? The file? We only have about 10 minutes before he gets there and realizes that we…erm…lied to him. And he'll come back tired. And angry."

"We sent him to the room on the other side of the building," Ed snickered to himself.

"Brother."

"Right," Edward said. "Al, you watch the door." And he dove into the files.

Al looked over at me, and said, "I'm Alphonse, and this is my older brother-"

"Edward. I know." There was a silence.

"Soooo…what are we lookin' for?"

"The file on the Tourniquet Alchemist," Ed said, without glancing up. I raised my eyebrows, and an amused grin spread on to my face.

"Oooh, what about her?" I asked.

"Apparently she's studied some techniques from Xing that might aide in our…investigation. She was gratified as a state alchemist at 15."

"Oh dear, so young," I sighed with sympathy.

"We've never met her before, but we're hoping she'll help us."

"She sounds like a real character."

"Yeah. We hear she got her name because she takes the nerves and veins of people's appendages and constricts them with the surrounding muscle until…" He trailed off. "Apparently the military uses her for torturing purposes."

My face darkened, and I said in a lower voice, "That sounds horrible."

"We know, but even if she is a grim character, we still need her help. People say she's antisocial, but we can break her. Right Al?" Ed laughed, elbowing his brother. I pursed my lips.

"Heh heh, y-yeah," Al mumbled, glancing at the door nervously. Breaking into a cheerful smile, I looked at them, and said, "Well, good luck." I started towards the door. "And tell me if you find her," I mentioned, walking out.

"Well, that was weird," Ed murmured, staring at the door after it had closed. "She never told us her name."

"Brother," Al said, file in hand.

"What? Did you find it?" Ed jumped up, attempting to peek over Al's shoulder. There, in the open folder, was a picture of a pale girl whose dark hair fell down to her shoulders. She looked a little thin, and her eyes were green and grim. Her ears were a little too big for her head. Next to it was a name: Acker, Marin, Tourniquet Alchemist. There was a silenced, and they both slowly looked up at the door that had closed.

"That girl was…" And the footsteps in the hall grew farther away until they vanished.

*Short chapter is short * * Sorry* Well, to tell you the truth, I'm really sick of seeing people reduced to BEGGING for reviews. So I'm not going to! HAH!

…

* Whispers * Please review. O-O


	2. Chapter 2

I'm not even gonna comment on how stuck I got on this one and how my brain hurts from thinking about the amount of time it took to write this MINISCULE AMOUNT OF PAGES.

You guys, (To whoever is listening, IDK…) the story will run uber-smoothly now that this part's up. I know I'm a slacker ( -.-" ) but things are gonna go much faster now that 'm done here. The Authoress apologizes.

**Disclaimer**: If I owned FMA, Roy would call Al C3PO.

Enjoy.

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"Marin, I can't accept this report."

Of course he couldn't. Of course. It's not like she spent hours trying to summarize all of the things that had happened to her in Persterone. It's not like she had messed up and started over about 17 billion times on the typewriter. And it wasn't like she had to conjure up every single horrible thing that had happened to her in the town, every gut clenching memory wretched up from her mind and painfully typed up every little detail that made her inwardly cringe. It wasn't like that at all. And now? Now he wasn't even going to accept the report.

Fucking Colonel.

He glanced up at her, and flipping through the pages, asked, "If you think that writing up these reports is some kind of opportunity to mess with me, than you've got some nerve handing something like THIS in."

Oh God. She wished she didn't have to talk about this. She wished that Mustang had never summoned her to his office from her place in the barracks. Her eyes flickered over to the door from the couch, and she prayed that Edward would come bursting through the door like he did before. Which wasn't very logical of her at all, to tell you the truth. Edward was probably still putting out the flames on his ass from when the Colonel came back, sweaty and angry, and found his filed cabinet broken into and his files being poked through. When she came back the following morning, they were still working on reconstructing the office from the damage he had done. Plus those boys were still looking for her.

She hoped Alphonse was okay.

"Marin?"

"Hnn? You say somethn'?"

"You know, you could at least TRY to LOOK like you're paying attention when I'm talking to you."

"Does it look like I would even do you that favor?" She asked, clearly annoyed with him at the moment.

"Look Marin," he said exasperated, "What do you think would happen if I filed this report? You've got mentions of homunculi, children being murdered, and a fabled element that hasn't even been proven to exist in your report."

"Oh, no one ever looks at those things anyways," she scowled.

"Marin! This is serious. Are you going to tell me what happened or not?!"

"Can't you clearly see that I'm trying to avoid it?"

"MARIN."

"Fine. You know what?! FINE. You want to know what I saw in that town?" She growled venomously. "I went there on the information that the military gave me, which, surprise! Was WRONG. Sure, things were being stolen. Knives and reaping hooks. But kids were disappearing too, Mustang. And that night…I went to the meat warehouse because I heard a scream. And you know what I saw? I saw a pile of dead kids, Mustang. Lifeless. You know. I KNOW you know. The hollow look that they get." Roy looked away. "Corpses- they're all the same inside." She was shaking furiously. "So I went around the corner of the haystack, and a person with a ouroborus tattoo on their left thigh with long dark hair was there covered in blood. And he was ripping up kids, Mustang. HE WAS RIPPING THEM UP. Saying shit like 'Let's see what makes you tick' and 'where is that damn stone?'" She didn't remember standing up or starting to shout, but she was. "And you know what I did? I ran away. I ran away AGAIN." The silence was deafening. Mustang wasn't even looking at me anymore- he had averted his eyes down to the papers on his desk. She was still shaking, and she took a deep breath. Walking towards the exit, she faced the door and said, "I'm taking a few days off."

He stared at her back, and said quietly, "You're going to those boys, aren't you?"

It wasn't a question. She put her hand on the doorknob, and it opened halfway before he asked, "Why are you helping them?" She stopped for a moment, and then without answering, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

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"Brother? You've been so quiet today. And that means you're thinking about something. Or you're just in pain from the colonel. In fact thinking about it now it's probably the latter." Al inwardly cringed at the memory of the colonel with his gloves, bursting into the room.

Ed glared at him, and unconsciously rubbed his backside.

Come to think of it, it was pretty close to being dark. They would be getting back to the base, but Al insisted that it probably was best to stay away from the colonel for a little bit…which it probably was. There was a silence between them.

"That girl…" Ed muttered.

"That was a little odd," Al admitted. Ed looked up at him funny.

"What? No, I was going to say…RUDE! She couldn't have told us that she was the alchemist we were looking for in the first place?! I mean, if she had, we wouldn't have been caught by Colonel bastard and had our asses- well, MY ass- burned off! We wouldn't even have had to break into the file cabinet!" Ed ranted. "I mean, all we wanted was her help! I even asked nice!" he said, throwing his hands up in the air. Turning to Al and pointing his finger at him, Ed said in a low voice, "And I NEVER ask nice!"

"You were always a little hostile towards strangers brother," Al admitted meekly.

"It's not like I even said anything mean about her! Well, except for the anti-social thing, and even that wasn't that bad! I mean, that girl is probably just a stuck up, selfish military dog who doesn't give two shits about anyone but hersel-" he stopped as they rounded the corner, and came face to face with a terrifyingly calm and collected alchemist.

"I guess now is a bad time." Marin said, stony faced.

Ed looked a little surprised at first, and then, turning his face and sticking out his lower lip, said, "Why were you eavesdropping on us?" Al stood behind him; a little too shocked and embarrassed to speak. Marin raised her eyebrows, and said in a monotone voice, "I'm going to ignore that first question and give you a second chance to say something to me that will make me not want to have my foot make contact with between your legs." Ed opened his mouth to say a sour retort, but she glared at him and Al answered quickly before his brother could say anything, "How much did you hear?"

Marin, a little jarred by Al's voice, quickly recovered, and snarled towards Edward, "I don't know. I guess I'm just a rude, selfish, stuck up dog of the military who doesn't give two shits about anyone but herself and can't even eavesdrop properly." Al cringed.

"What makes you think you can go shifting around in my file?"

"None of your business," Ed said.

"It's MY FILE, DUMBASS. Of COURSE it's my business."

"We just wanted to know where we could find you!" Al gestured nervously. She looked over at him. There was a silence.

"What do you want?" She asked in a tone mixed with strain, exasperation and annoyance. "Why were you looking for me? A bunch of kids poking their heads around in my file – what in the world are you looking for that starts with finding me?"

The glanced at each other quietly, and Ed said, "We're…trying to find something important."

"Something important."

"Yeah."

"Okay, let me get this straight. You want me to help you two boys, who I haven't known for more than 5 hours, on a mission to another town that I don't even know the details of yet and that could be potentially dangerous, on the drastically vague premise that I would be helping you two 'look for something important.'" Ed scratched the back of his head and shifted his weight to the back of his heels.

"Uh…well, yeah." She stared at him then, and cold green met fiery wheat colored irises. She'd never seen anyone like this with so much force, so much determination. They locked eyes, and Marin remembered something she was certain that she had buried a long, long time ago.

_Those boys had come around again last night, drunk and stupid. There was a lot of glass, she remembered, and she had told Joan and Brian to make sure that Lynn didn't step near it, because sometimes she didn't believe everything that they told her and hurt herself. She was picking it up with Mat,t who kept slicing his fingers, and they didn't say anything to each other about the broken window. She was ripping up an old blanket for bandages for his hands when he told her, "We'll get out of here one day, Marin. And I'll buy a big house with an icebox and a sink and we'll all live there together. I'll buy big colorful windows that we'll break on purpose and we won't have to worry about the cold getting in because I'll have enough money to buy ten more." She looked up from his sliced fingers and saw eyes that glinted with a determination she would never forget. They burned at a hundred degrees._

_So did his forehead._

The memory ended. She blinked twice, and then asked, "What time does the train leave?"

Ed looked a little bewildered, and said, "Really?" She glared at him, and said in a threatening voice,

"Do not push my buttons, Fullmetal Alchemist." Al gave a little sigh of relief, and Marin jumped at this, forgetting he was there and looking up at him.

"Wait." Ed narrowed his eyes, and put a hand in front of Al to prevent him from stepping forwards.

"What now?"

"This is just too…picturesque. Suspicious. There's only one thing you have to tell us before I tell you the train time." She snorted, and said to him in a degrading tone,

"Well you're not exactly telling _me_ everything, Mr. looking-for-something-important."

Ed ignored this, but his expression turned from steely monotone to curiosity, and he said with a slight twinge to his voice, "Why, exactly, are you helping us."

Her carefully composed mask shattered to the ground in a thousand pieces, and she was certain that her face showed everything that she was thinking.

"I- Wh-What?"

"Everyone has an ulterior motive. You're clearly a pragmatist individual- tell us why you're helping us."

"I- there's no-" she stuttered, caught completely off guard. Mustang's face flashed into her mind.

"_Why are you helping those boys?" _

_It's not something I can explain to another_, her mind screamed as she tried to reason with herself. She thought of Matt with the glass in his fingers, the look in his eyes, the smoke billowing up from the crater in the earth and the screams.

_**I will not run away again. **_

But she didn't say that out loud. She looked down at the ground, ashamed and silent, and a full minute passed by before Ed said in a gruff voice, "Fine. If you're not going to tell us, then it's none of our business. The train leaves tomorrow at 3. We'll come to the barracks. Be ready with a suitcase." He turned and walked away. Al started to turn, and he could have sworn that he heard her say, "Goodnight Alphonse." But when he turned around, all he saw was the tiny lick of the coat diving around a corner down the block. He shook his head. It was probably just his imagination.

R&R, please~


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